The Difference Between Facts and Factoids

I thought for our first fact it would be appropriate to have a fact about facts and factoids. So what’s the difference between a fact and a factoid?

A fact is clearly something that is true and the information is reliable. A fact is something that courts, scientific experiments and reliable referencing material, such as dictionaries and encyclopedias have. Facts. They can be both short and long in substance and detail, but in more cases they are often longer, providing substantial evidence to their veracity. A factoid on the other hand is different.

Trending now on our site

A factoid is more often than not something that had been created for print that appears to be true, but is in fact, fiction. As is often the case with factoids, they are written and presented in such a way to make the reader believe they are in fact factual, and they are most often passed off as being a fact, but with little evidence to support any claim. There are many factoids circulating among emails, social media and questionable websites. We have an entire section devoted to debunking many of these factoids as myths.

So in a more modern world a fact is generally regarded as being much more reliable with evidence to support it. A factoid is shorted in detail, often unreliable, but as time has passed they can offer some truth in the detail.

Our best suggestion when finding as factoid is to research it further before accepting it as gospel. You’d be surprised about many factoids circulating.

Meaning of the word fact:

The word fact first appeared with it’s similar meaning of “things known to be true” in the 1630’s from notion of something that has actually occurred.